


Red Dust

by quantumoddity



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Angst, Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Other, Peter Nureyev Needs a Hug, Peter Nureyev's Backstory, Post-Canon, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:29:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27577877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quantumoddity/pseuds/quantumoddity
Summary: Juno and Nureyev are officially retired and enjoying their lives back on Mars. But there are some things that are difficult to forget.
Relationships: Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel
Comments: 3
Kudos: 66





	Red Dust

“I’m getting too old for this.”

Juno was pretty sure PIs were supposed to think that sort of thing when they were doing something cool and dangerous, like leaping the gap between the cars of a moving train or ducking behind crates at a harbour to avoid laser fire. 

Rather than crawling on their stomachs to get their pet sewer rabbit’s favourite ball out from behind the sofa. But hey, it was his day off. 

Then again, Small Fry did look delighted when he straightened back up with a loud groan and the cracking of some vertebrae, whiffling her nose and hopping excitedly, shaking the floorboards of their little apartment. Smiling fondly, Juno threw the ball off down the hallway so she could chase it, squeaking happily. 

“Next time that happens I’m not getting it out for you! You can go make goo goo eyes at your daddy for a change,” he called after her, brushing dust from his curls and his shirt. But the smile didn’t fade from his face, even after she had rounded the corner to go and cause mischief somewhere else. Anyone who said keeping a massive sewer rabbit in a modest Hyperion apartment was a bad idea was just too afraid of cleaning up the occasional broken lamp or gnaw marks on the walls. 

He was about to straighten back up and go back to the book he’d been reading, he got so little time to do things like that these days but his husband was still at work, the boys were asleep and Bianca was happily playing in her room, giving him a rare hour or two to himself that he didn’t want to waste. He was mildly tempted to crack the lock on the drawer where Nureyev stowed away any case files he brought home so he couldn’t continue working himself ragged outside of his own office but, contrary to the size of the lock and the dedication with which his husband hid the key, he really was getting better at giving himself time off. 

After all, it had been a hell of a long time since work was the only thing he had to keep him going. 

He was about to do that when something else behind the sofa caught his eye, something that wasn’t just a toy of Bee Bee’s that she’d forgotten or one of Small Fry’s hordes of left socks that she liked to build nests out of. He was about to sigh and mutter something about the wonders of having three kids being that you’d find trash in the weirdest places but something wary ran its way down his spine. Something that was maybe instinct, maybe his detective brain putting pieces together and proving yet again that the years spent theoretically on the other side of law and order hadn’t dampened his skills.

Whatever it was, it made him reach out, once again feeling the twinge in the base of his spine, using his hip to nudge the couch further out so he could snag it and bring it out. 

It was a small bag, something designed to be inconspicuously held at the waist or over the shoulder, dark in colour so it wouldn’t catch the eye. Juno frowned, the wariness growing stronger as he sat on the couch and opened it up. 

He recognised the precision and fastidiousness immediately, like it was rolling off it in waves like too much perfume. It was in the way everything was crammed in so tight there wasn’t a spare inch of space, everything chosen for its shape and size so it would go in seamlessly like a game of tetris. It was in the items themselves, every possible scenario accounted for; dried rations, iodine pills to purify water, vouchers for shuttle tickets that would take you anywhere in the galaxy, tightly rolled stacks of genuine honest to god Earth currency to take you even further than that, no questions asked, clothes folded so tightly they looked like napkins at first. And, in an even more closely concealed pocket on the inside seam, fake documents, fake IDs, fake cards loaded up with fake creds. 

And a knife. If Juno had been entertaining any doubts, any lingering threads of uncertainty, then seeing his tired reflection in that razor edge snipped them neatly away. 

He sighed, long and low, filing through the emotions rising in his chest, sending away any that he knew weren’t helpful or were just offshoots of his anxiety, counting backwards from ten like Buddy had shown him until all the messiness sorted itself out. 

He didn’t pick his book back up. He watched the clock and waited for his husband to come home. 

Nureyev really enjoyed working at the salon. He kept waiting, expecting to get bored or frustrated with it all, but it hadn’t happened yet. He just laughed at the conversations with his colleagues more and more, got more familiar with the smell of hairspray on his clothes and felt a small spark of pride at the ache in his ankles at the end of a long day. 

It was enough to make him feel something approaching hope. 

He slid off his shoes, not wanting to track any dust from outside into the apartment. Living on Mars had meant needing to get used to the fine red silt clinging to his soles every day and turning up in the most inconvenient places, no matter how careful he tried to be. Juno, the Aurinkos and Rita barely even seemed to notice it. Nureyev assumed that came from growing up with the stuff. 

The apartment was surprisingly quiet, enough that he was already getting ideas before he walked into the living room and saw his wife sitting on the sofa. 

“What exactly have you done with our children, my love?” he grinned, “Bought us some alone time?”

Juno started a little at his voice, even though he should have heard him come in, the door closing, his keys rattling into the bowl. And when his eye lifted and met Nureyev’s, it was immediately clear that his ideas had been far off the mark. 

“Yeah, Rita has them,” Juno’s voice was even, not full of scowls and snarls as usual, not in any way a ‘we’re in serious trouble’ voice but Nureyev’s veins still flooded with adrenaline as he rooted to the spot, a discordant clashing in his ears, “I did want to have some time with just you and me.”

“And yet you’re still dressed?” Nureyev was a little impressed with himself, how his tone came out still perfectly light and joking, like he wasn’t completely gripped by panic and his brain wasn’t scribbling blue prints behind his eyes. 

It would seem hairdressing hadn’t lost him all of his skills. 

“Babe, listen,” Juno sat forward, eye gentle, “Just come and sit with me, okay? Nothing’s wrong, nothing bad has happened or anything like that. I just want to talk.”

Nureyev frowned. Maybe he had lost his skills a little. Or maybe they’d just never worked on Juno. 

But he did sit, stiffly, still braced for something awful in spite of his wife’s reassurance. And when Juno wordlessly produced one of his getaway bags and set it on the coffee table between them, he was ready to run. 

But Juno didn’t let the moment build, he didn’t keep him hanging. He simply sighed and reached across the gap between them to take his hand. 

“Peter, I’m sorry.”

“What?” Nureyev looked up, certain he must have misheard. 

But Juno’s expression was firmly set in penance, mouth turned down, brow fallen across his eye which was soft and sad, “I never once asked you if you were struggling to adjust to the way our lives are now. I never thought to check in with you. I let you down in that and I’m sorry.”

“I...what?” Nureyev was well aware he was falling short of his usual articulation but no more words were coming in to fill the blank gap in his mind, “You’re not...you’re not upset with me?”

Juno frowned a little, shaking his head, “No. No, why would I be?”

“Because…” Laughter, of all things, raw edged and disbelieving bubbled up in his chest, “Because the only thing to take from this is that I’m insane or I was going to leave you?” 

“Are either of those things why you’ve got these bags?” Juno asked evenly. 

Nureyev winced, “You found the others?”

“No but I know you enough to assume.”

Nureyev took a shaky breath, “I’m not leaving you. And...and I don’t know whether I’m insane or not, honestly.”

The sadness in Juno's eye deepened and he squeezed his husband’s hand, “I don’t think you are but we need to talk about this. What exactly were you trying to prepare for with these?”

“I...I don’t know…” Nureyev didn’t like this one bit, this reversal of their usual roles, Juno being so calm and collected and even while he sat here struggling to leash his emotions, “Nothing! I...I wasn’t…”

Juno exhaled, something cracking through his calm, “Don’t do that. Nureyev, please, don’t shut me out. That’s the one thing I need you not to do right now.”

Nureyev felt his throat close and he couldn’t have said anything if his life depended on it. He didn’t want to shut his wife out, he really didn’t, but it was so hard to unlearn something that had been your first line of defence since childhood. 

But if there was anyone who understood that, it was Juno. 

“Listen, Nureyev, there’s no answer you can give me that will make me angry with you or upset me. I just want you to feel safe here with me and with the kids and...finding this, it’s just made me worry that you don’t?”

Nureyev forced his lungs to pull in air and turn it into words, determined to not be the man who had shut Juno out for years, the man who had packed those bags. 

“I do feel safe here, I am happy here,” he promised, feeling the truth of it and drawing strength from that, “It’s just been so long since I stayed in one place, since...since I  _ could  _ feel safe. And sometimes it feels like another cover I’m wearing for a little while, like something’s going to change and I’ll have to run again. And I guess I just wanted to prepare for that, even if it isn’t what I want. Even if I’m praying it never happens, I just can’t let myself be unprepared. It’s not how I was raised. And having those bags...I can breathe a little easier. I can settle into this more because even if the absolute worst thing happens, I’ll survive.” 

Juno nodded slowly, eye never leaving his husband’s face, “Nureyev, we both knew this was going to be a change. And change is hard, even if it’s for the better. And if this helps you settle down, I’m fine with that.” 

“But I’m not,” Nureyev croaked, wanting to wipe his eyes so the tears there didn’t fall but also not wanting to let go of Juno’s hand, “I don’t want to live my life like it’s not mine. This isn’t a cover, it’s my family and my home and I want to feel like that.” 

Juno squeezed his fingers, “This is yours, Nureyev. I’m your wife and they’re our kids and this is our home. No one is taking any of this from us, I promise. And if you need me to remind you of that, I will, every single damn day for the rest of our lives if that's what you need. And it fucking sucks that everything you’ve lived up until now is telling you different.”

“Yeah,” Nureyev mumbled, the tears falling and dripping off his nose now but they hit Juno’s hands before his own and he didn’t flinch, “It does.”

“Come here…” Juno murmured, pulling him close, wrapping his arms around him as their bodies fit themselves together, “You can cry, it’s okay.”

Nureyev did. Because he believed Juno when he told him it was. 

They spent the rest of their rare evening alone pulling out all of the getaway bags Nureyev had stowed over the first week of their retirement from the Carte Blanche, all of the stockpiles of food as well, everything he’d hidden underneath their new life with Mag’s voice and the voice of a hungry child guiding his hands. They didn’t get rid of it, he wasn’t ready for that yet, but it went into a box under their bed instead. 

And Juno still told him he was proud of him. 

Nureyev thought there was always going to be that part of him that had Mag’s rules in it’s mind and a constant hunger in its belly. All he could ever do was fold it up as small as he could make it and find space for it in the back of his brain. 

But with Juno’s arm around him and red dust on the soles of his shoes, that felt easier than it ever had before. 

**Author's Note:**

> Please consider leaving a comment! And if you'd like more about this post canon Juno and Nureyev as dads idea, you can ask me anything over on Tumblr @mollymauk-teafleak


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